Two of Carr’s Three Immigration Bills Deferred a Year

State Representative Joe Carr began this year with the goal of passing three immigration bills. Yesterday, all three were up for consideration in legislative committees. But as WPLN’s Joe White reports, only one will see a floor vote before this year’s session ends.

Last year the General Assembly set up a system where jailers automatically checked the immigration status of any foreigners put into cells. Carr wanted to extend that to any person stopped by police. But it’s an expensive proposition.

“A three million dollar fiscal note just doesn’t make that possible right now. So we’re gonna come back next year and try to address it then. Hopefully the money will be there.”

Carr’s enforcement law was put off to 2012, along with a measure seeking to stop illegal immigrants from collecting state benefits.

In contrast, his bill requiring employers to check the status of every new hire with the federal E-Verify system sailed through three House committees in one day.

That’s despite objections from business lobbyists. They say the E-Verify system is no more accurate than the Social Security paperwork employers already do.

The E-Verify bill is to go to the House floor Thursday.

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Carr says the E-Verify bill is the “lynchpin” of the three anti-illegal immigrant measures. The more persons slip across the border and into Tennessee for jobs, the more pressure on government systems designed to help citizens, he says.

“What we have is a best, very conservative guess and what we’ve used is the Pew Hispanic Center’s number of 140,000. We believe it’s a little higher than that. We believe of the 140,000 illegals in Tennessee, there are 110,000 in the civilian work force. And of that 140,000, there are probably about twenty, twenty-five thousand in the school system.”

So he wanted to pass the bill he calls the “SAVE” bill, limiting the eligibility of illegals for entitlement programs. The bill would have cost $1.5 million to put into effect, he says. He put it aside for the rest of the year, but got a promise, Carr says.

“So we got, really an assurance, from the speaker, from the Republican leadership, the majority leader and the caucus chair, as well as the governor’s senior staff, that they were committed to not only pushing this piece of legislation next year, but finding a funding mechanism so that we could pass it.”

Carr’s anti-illegal immigration bills are these:

First, HB 1380 Carr/SB 780 Ketron, immigration enforcement checks.

In the Senate the bill was earlier deferred to the “last meeting” of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the legislative equivalent of being in a holding pattern. The fiscal note that Carr cited says it would cost the state $2.9 million the first year, and also cost local governments almost $2 million in fiscal 2011-12.

Local governments would have been forced into compliance by a fine for $500 to $5,000 per day for not following the law. The bill is officially put aside until 2012.

Second, SB 1325 Johnson/HB 1379 Carr, entitlement eligibility for illegal aliens

The House Finance Subcommittee deferred the bill to 2012.

The acronym “SAVE” stands for “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.”

Third, SB 1669 Tracy/HB 1378 Carr, TN Lawful Employment Act

The House Finance Subcommittee approved the bill and sent it forward, despite testimony from business lobbyist Dan Haskell that one provision of the bill would allow any person to file a complaint against an employer. Haskell argued that such a complaint should at least be a sworn complaint.